Lures used for catching billfish and other game fish often are one-piece lures with a rigid body having one or more permanently attached skirts surrounding the hook. These lures are made and used in a variety of configurations and colors and are provided with skirts of different sizes, configurations, and colors. The skirts are generally fastened to the body, as by wire, glue, tape, or otherwise.
The disadvantage of the one-piece lures is that each one is "locked in" to its shape, color, weight, size, and the length and color of its skirt. During a typical fishing day, a fisherman may change lures many times, trying to find the lure that is just right for the prevailing light, sea condition, water color, water temperature, and available natural bait. These various conditions change throughout the day, and the fisherman using one-piece lures must have many lures in his tackle drawer, each pre-rigged with a leader and hooks. The rigging and storage of a sufficient variety of lures with their leaders and hooks is troublesome.
It is known to provide lures with replaceable skirts. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,237,534 to Van Der Clute, U.S. Pat. No. 2,617,226 to Yoshi, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,740,889 to Scott.
Van Der Clute shows a lure, which may be of one-piece or two-piece construction, with a replaceable skirt having an enlarged collar resiliently clamped to the outside of the lure.
Yoshi shows a two-piece lure with a replaceable skirt that is tied to the core.
Scott shows a two-piece lure with a frusto-conical core and a clamping member that snaps over the bulbous head of the core and tightly surrounds the core. A replaceable skirt is wrapped around the core and held in place by the removable clamping member.
My prior application, Ser. No. 456,527 shows a two-piece lure with a plurality of replaceable skirts, each of which is fastened to its own ring of metal or rigid plastic material which is large enough to pass over the leader and seat against an abutment on the core, or against the ring of a preceding skirt. The abutment prevents further rearward movement of the seated skirt(s) and forward movement of the seated skirt(s) is prevented by a shell which covers the skirt(s) and is seated on the core in clamping relation to the skirt(s).
The shell and core described in my earlier application are held together by frictional engagement of the shell with an O-ring surrounding the core. The shell is removed from the core by pulling the shell from the core with enough force to overcome the frictional resistance of the O-ring pressing against the shell.
Experience has shown that the use of preformed skirt rings surrounding the core and covered by the shell is a significant improvement over the prior art wrapping and tying the skirts to a lure, but that the frictional resistance that holds the shell to the core is sometimes undesirably overcome with the lure in the water while fishing.